Unnecessary footnotes are the internet’s best new meme¹

It’s pretty tough to force a meme. You can’t just say “this is a new meme” and expect everyone to go along with you.¹

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¹ Except when you can.

“this just in.. The New Meme On The Block is unnecessary footnotes and anyone who doesn’t like this idea can kiss this¹,” wrote Tumblr user equalistmako on Sep. 2. And, to validate what she was saying, she added an unnecessary footnote: “¹ my ass.”

Contrary to what typically happens when someone attempts to will a meme into existence, the “unnecessary footnotes” format took off bigtime on Tumblr. It really was the New Meme on the Block.

People started using the footnotes for everything, whether it was to contradict their original statements, or to finish a quote or song lyric. The Tumblr Meme Documentation gathered several good examples, including these:

Using the footnotes meme is pretty easy: you just have to annotate your original post with a few blank lines, a bunch of consecutive hyphens¹

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¹and a punchline.

The toughest part is typing a superscript “1.” It’s alt +B9 on Windows and… way too complicated on a Mac. Just copy and paste it.

As a meme that favors form over content, “unnecessary footnotes” is highly flexible. As a text-based meme, it doesn’t require Photoshop or image editing skills of any kind. Both of these things combine to make a great fit for Tumblr, perhaps the internet’s most lively incubator of text-based memes. It also plays well with older Tumblr tropes, like “Do you accept constructive criticism on your posts?”

The footnote meme could never catch on via Twitter, the other primary haven of textual memes, because of the 140-character (or 280-character, for some) limit. Twitter’s restrictions breed creativity, but there are some formal experiments that just don’t fit there.

Jay Hathaway is a senior writer, specializing in internet memes and weird online culture. He previously served as the Daily Dot’s news editor, was a staff writer at Gawker, and edited the classic websites Urlesque and Download Squad. His work has also appeared on nymag.com, suicidegirls.com, and the Morning News.